


Rest

by mariadperiad20



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Go me I guess, Guilt, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, PTSD, Trauma, implied domestic abuse (minor character), self-punishment, some great depression-era mentions, some violence, way less violent than most of my angst actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:54:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21624862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariadperiad20/pseuds/mariadperiad20
Summary: Not sleeping, not stopping, kept away the guilt, too. The minute he stopped, the minute he took a moment to himself, the guilt begins to crawl up his back, wrap itself around his lungs and choke off his breath, grip his heart and squeeze until it feels like he is going to die.PB would let him rest.
Relationships: PB/Noir, pbnoir, peter benjamin parker/peter parker, peter parker/noir
Comments: 4
Kudos: 77





	Rest

Noir didn’t have plans.

He never had plans.

Just… work. If not being a PI, being Spiderman. All there was to it - all there ever was to it.

Sleep was when they could get to him - they being an overarching sense of… well, _them_. The Nazis, the mafia, Vulture, Lizard… anyone and everyone who’d ever had it out for him. They could only get to him if he slept - so he didn’t sleep.

Other things couldn’t get to him then, either.

The hunger. The Depression hit everyone, and people didn’t get paid. Even if he did get paid, food was too expensive to buy. Even if he got food, there were always others who needed it more.

If he kept himself moving, the hunger didn’t catch up to him.

The spots dancing across his vision - sure, yeah, they were there. Almost constant, now. He had to be careful when he moved, not to take turns too fast lest his vision black out - it’s hard to recover from broken bones when you don’t rest, but it’s hard to avoid brick walls when you can’t see them.

Not sleeping, not _stopping_ , kept away the guilt, too. The minute he stopped, the minute he took a moment to himself, the guilt begins to crawl up his back, wrap itself around his lungs and choke off his breath, grip his heart and squeeze until it feels like he is going to die.

He’s failed so many times. His friends. His family. Children. Strangers. The man with the radio voice - never got his name, only heard his screams.

Those screams. Loud, guttural, begging screams, pleading for his life because he had something to live for.

They shot him in the stomach. Noir had killed them. It was too late.

His screams had gone on for what felt like hours.

They probably would have, if Noir hadn’t snapped his neck and ended it.

He’d never had to kill someone like that before. A victim. An innocent - well, as innocent as someone could be, these days.

 _It was a mercy_ , Noir reminded himself, _It was a mercy_.

It didn’t stop the screaming. Ever since that day, it’d never stopped.

Everyone was always screaming. Echoing in his mind, calling out for him to save them every moment he stopped moving. Every moment he lays down, the voices fill his mind.

He doesn’t even sit still anymore - if he does that, he might just pass out on the spot. MJ wonders where he is, why his spot at the bar, his stool, is filled by a stranger with a cigarette between their lips and bruises from beating their wife on their knuckles.

He would come by - but she wouldn’t even recognize him, now.

Haunted.

He didn’t even pay for his apartment, anymore. He didn’t have anything in there of value, anyway. Just a place to sleep.

He doesn’t need that, anymore.

He’s running himself ragged, he knows. He’s going to die if he doesn’t stop, if he doesn’t rest.

PB would let him rest, wouldn't let him die. Noir doesn't dare go to him, though. PB would see how far Noir had fallen. He couldn't let that happen.

He won’t let it get that far, anyway. He won't die. He’ll rest when the voices, when the mafia and the Nazis and the guilt, all the crushing, screaming guilt, rests too.

He’ll be fine until then.

Noir’s communicator… watch… thing was still functioning. Hard to believe that it hadn’t gotten smashed to pieces when he’d… well, at any point, really, in the past few weeks.

He wasn’t quite sure how it worked. But he knew enough to know that the buzzing meant someone was trying to call him. He also knew that portals could be opened by anyone into any of their dimensions - he’d expressly told the others not to do that for his.

Color was… difficult. It was interesting, sure. In a painful, aching way that made his brain feel like it was melting. It was beautiful, but made him feel like he was going to be sick.

He hadn’t told them that part. It didn’t seem necessary.

Either way, the others had left him alone. He had wanted to reach out - really, he had.

But every time he went to open a portal, it felt too much like resting.

He could hear the screaming in the back of his mind, begging him to save them, save them, _save them…_ And he would close the portal and get back to work.

Get back to what mattered.

Seeing PB was… well, it was tempting. Tempting in the way that alcohol was tempting to the men who spend all day trying to find work and whose wives starve. Tempting how children see food in windows that they could never hope to buy, and how if the grocer looks away at _just_ the right moment, they can eat today. Tempting in how the mafia promises to pay good money for drug-runners. Tempting in how the Nazis swear that everything is the Jews’ fault, and that everything would be solved in an instant if they were gone.

PB was temptation, with his soft eyes and his warm hands and his awkward stance, and his mismatched shoes, and the way he just _looked_ at Noir and could somehow see him.

Noir wanted to rest. PB would give him that. PB would offer him something he couldn’t have.

And Noir would take it.

By heaven, would he take it. And he would never let go, either. He would cling to that comfort, to PB, forever.

He would rest.

Except then people would die.

Noir’s breath caught, restricted, and he dropped to his knees, one hand reaching to his chest. He was being selfish. Again.

Spots dancing across his vision more and more, multiplying across everything. He blinked, over and over, watching them clear away one by one as he struggled to breathe.

He would go back to work in a moment. Just a moment.

The screaming was getting louder again, pounding in his ears, crying out to him.

There weren’t any words, now. Just screams - absolute agony, of vocal cords ripping from the sound being forced from them.

Noir staggered to his feet, bracing against a wall for support.

His communicator was buzzing. It was always buzzing.

He stared down at it.

The screams weren’t stopping.

They were getting worse.

Maybe… maybe he could. Just this once.

The city wouldn’t mind.

The screaming rose in pitch, and Noir flinched from it.

Just this once. Just this once, he needed to rest.

Noir pressed a few buttons, a portal opening in front of him.

 _Just this once_ , he repeated to himself, over and over, trying to drown out the screams.

As if that was even possible, anymore.

Noir stepped through, into a world of color. It hurt - it always hurt - but it distracted him from the screaming.

“Noir?” PB’s surprised voice was easily audible over the noise, screams giving way to his voice.

“What’s up? Haven’t seen you in forever.”

Noir watched PB come into view through the black spots, grinning crookedly.

“Noir?” he asked, stepping closer.

Noir felt himself swaying slightly. “Hey.” He said, leaning against the wall behind him. It felt cold.

Funny. Everything around PB always seemed so warm.

“Everything okay, bud?”

“No.” Noir found himself saying, almost mindlessly. “I’m just here because I can’t- I can’t think. I don’t want to think. It’s too loud.”

PB looked at Noir and saw everything. The hunger, the pain. He looked at Noir like he could hear the screaming, the begging for the pain to end. Noir wondered at what point he had pulled off his mask - probably when he couldn’t breathe, since it was still clutched in his hand tightly, glasses shoved into the pocket of his coat. Noir supposed it didn’t really matter.

Their eyes met, and Noir knew in that moment that he was lost.

PB had him from the moment he opened the portal.

“How about you sit down, yeah?” PB asked cautiously, taking another step towards Noir. They were close now - a foot between them, give or take.

“I can’t.” Noir shook his head, more spots splattering across his vision. “I don’t think I can walk that far.”

PB was temptation. The rest, the exhaustion, was crashing over him, drowning out the screams, pushing it aside like it was nothing.

PB would let him rest.

PB would let him stop.

“Here, I’ve got you.” PB said quietly, taking Noir’s arm and guiding him to a horizontal surface. It was a bed, Noir was pretty sure. A bit messy, but so was PB.

Noir needed messy. He needed a distraction from the screaming.

PB lowered him down onto it, and Noir swore he had never felt anything more comfortable in his life.

Then PB started to move, and Noir reached out, panicked, wrapping his hand around PB’s wrist.

“Please, don’t. I can’t - the screaming. It’s too loud. It’s always too loud.”

“Okay.” PB sat down next to him. “What do you need me to do?”

“Talk. Just… anything. You make them stop, Peter. You always do.”

“Always?”

“Before, with the others. You made them stop then, too.”

It hadn’t been that bad before, back then. It was just normal guilt, then. Now, now it was the guilt of a murderer, of a killer of _innocents_ , of commiting a mercy that felt more and more like a sin every day.

Noir was not a religious man - few people were, in these days. But it made him hope for one, if only so he could atone. Somehow.

But until that was going to happen, if it ever was, Noir could only punish himself.

Instead, PB… Peter would let him stop. Peter would let him pretend the screaming never happened, never existed. That Noir was just as innocent as the man with the radio voice. That the man with the radio voice had never existed.

PB lay down in the bed next to Noir, propped up on a few pillows made of dirty jackets.

“Well, I could tell you about the time I met this guy called Mr. Doctor - he swore up and down he wasn’t magic, but I’m telling you he was. He had this thing where whenever…”

PB’s hand reached up to card through Noir’s hair, absentminded. Noir could hear PB’s voice start to fade out, but for once it wasn’t because the voice was being drowned out by screaming - as it so often was for back home. No, no, it was because for once he was able to _rest_.

Resting was nice.

Noir’s eyes slipped closed, and the darkness that greeted him was welcoming, inviting. Not cold, not choking. Not screaming.

And PB kept talking, the whole time.

And the screaming left him alone.

And Noir finally slept.

**Author's Note:**

> short fic. i haven't written pbnoir in a while, so it's nice to get back into it a bit.
> 
> i made a hint hint reference that y'all in fandom world may appreciate ~~or take issue with since i killed him lol~~ but in my defense, this is how i coped with thanksgiving.
> 
> comments are great! I take fic requests on tumblr, and have a long fic called City(e)scape with the same pairing (and a whole lot more angst) if you liked what you read here! :D


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